Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

The man mewled in the dirt as he tried to drag himself towards his horse. He got one desperate finger hooked over the stirrup as he heard Ferro’s quick footsteps behind, but fell back with a squeal when he tried to lift himself. He lay on his side as she ran up, the blade hissing angry from its wooden sheath. His eyes rolled towards her, wild with pain and fear.

A dark face, like her own.

An unexceptional face of forty years old, with a patchy beard and a pale birthmark on one cheek, dust caked to the other, beads of shining sweat across his forehead. She stood over him, and sunlight glinted on the edge of the curved sword.

“Give me a reason not to do it,” she found she had said. Strange, that she had said it, and to a soldier in the Emperor’s army, of all people. In the heat and dust of the Badlands of Kanta she had not been in the habit of offering chances. Perhaps something had changed in her, out there in the wet and ruined west of the world.

He stared up for a moment, his lip trembling. “I…” he croaked, “my daughters! I have two daughters. I pray to see them married…”

Ferro frowned. She should not have let him start talking. A father, with daughters. Just as she had once had a father, been a daughter. This man had done her no harm. He was no more Gurkish than she was. He had not chosen to fight, most likely, or had any choice but to do as the mighty Uthman-ul-Dosht commanded.

“I will go… I swear to God… I will go back to my wife and my daughters…”

The arrow had taken him just under the shoulder and gone clean through, snapped off when he hit the ground. She could see the splintered shaft under his arm. It had missed his lung, by the way he was talking. It would not kill him. Not right away, at least. Ferro could help him onto his horse and he would be gone, with a chance to live.

The scout held up a trembling hand, a spatter of blood on his long thumb. “Please… this is not my war I—”

The sword carved a deep wound out of his face, through his mouth, splitting his lower jaw apart. He made a hissing moan. The next blow cut his head half off. He rolled over, dark blood pouring out into the dark earth, clutching at the stubble of the shorn crop. The sword broke the back of his skull open and he was still.

It seemed that Ferro was not in a merciful mood that day.

The butchered scout’s horse stared dumbly at her. “What?” she snapped. Perhaps she had changed, out there in the west, but no one changes that much. One less soldier in Uthman’s army was a good thing, wherever he came from. She had no need to make excuses for herself. Especially not to a horse. She grabbed at its bridle and gave it a yank.

Vallimir might have been a pink fool, but Ferro had to admit that he had managed the ambush well. Ten scouts lay dead in the village square, their torn clothes flapping in the breeze, their blood smeared across the dusty ground. The only Union casualty was the idiot who had been jerked over by his own rope, covered in dust and scratches.

A good day’s work, so far.

A soldier poked at one of the corpses with his boot. “So this is what the Gurkish look like, eh? Not so fearsome now.”

“These are not Gurkish,” said Ferro. “Kadiri scouts, pressed into service. They did not want to be here any more than you wanted them here.” The man stared back at her, puzzled and annoyed. “Kanta is full of people. Not everyone with a brown face is Gurkish, or prays to their God, or bows to their Emperor.”

“Most do.”

“Most have no choice.”

“They’re still the enemy,” he sneered.

“I did not say we should spare them.” She shouldered past, back through the door into the building with the bell tower. It seemed Vallimir had managed to take a prisoner after all. He and some others were clustered nervously around one of the scouts, on his knees with his arms bound tightly behind him. He had a bloody graze down one side of his face, staring up with that look that prisoners tend to have.

Scared.

“Where… is… your… main… body?” Vallimir was demanding.

“He does not speak your tongue, pink,” snapped Ferro, “and shouting it will not help.”

Vallimir looked angrily round at her. “Perhaps we should have brought someone with us who speaks Kantic,” he said with heavy irony.

“Perhaps.”

There was a long pause, while Vallimir waited for her to say more, but she said nothing. Eventually, he gave a long sigh. “Do you speak Kantic?”

“Of course.”

“Then would you be so kind as to ask him some questions for us?”

Ferro sucked her teeth. A waste of her time, but if it had to be done, it was best done quickly. “What shall I ask him?”

“Well… how far away the Gurkish army is, how many are in it, what route they are taking, you know—”

“Huh.” Ferro squatted down in front of the prisoner and looked him squarely in the eyes. He stared back, helpless and frightened, no doubt wondering what she was doing with these pinks. She wondered herself.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

She drew her knife and held it up. “You will answer my questions, or I will kill you with this knife. That is who I am. Where is the Gurkish army?”

He licked his lips. “Perhaps… two days march away, to the south.”

“How many?”

“More than I could count. Many thousands. People of the deserts, and the plains, and the—”

“What route are they taking?”

“I do not know. We were only told to ride to this village, and see whether it was empty.” He swallowed, the lump on the front of his sweaty throat bobbing up and down. “Perhaps my Captain knows more—”

“Ssss,” hissed Ferro. His Captain would be telling nobody anything now she had carved up his head. “A lot of them,” she snapped at Vallimir, in common, “and many more to come, two days’ march behind. He does not know their route. What now?”

Vallimir rubbed at the light stubble on his jaw. “I suppose… we should take him back to the Agriont. Deliver him to the Inquisition.”

“He knows nothing. He will only slow us down. We should kill him.”

“He surrendered! To kill him would be no better than murder, war or no war.” Vallimir beckoned to one of the soldiers. “I won’t have that on my conscience.”

“I will.” Ferro’s knife slid smoothly into the scout’s heart, and out. His mouth and his eyes opened up very wide. Blood bubbled through the split cloth on his chest, spread out quickly in a dark ring. He gawped at it, making a long sucking sound.

“Glugh…” His head dropped back, his body sagged. She turned to see the soldiers staring at her, pale faces puffed up with shock. A busy day for them, maybe. A lot to learn, but they would soon get used to it.

That, or the Gurkish would kill them.

“They want to burn your farms, and your towns, and your cities. They want to make slaves of your children. They want everyone in the world to pray to God in the same way they do, with the same words they use, and for your land to be a province of their Empire. I know this.” Ferro wiped the blade of her knife on the sleeve of the dead man’s tunic. “The only difference between war and murder is the number of the dead.”

Vallimir stared down at the corpse of his prisoner for a moment, his lips thoughtfully pursed. Ferro wondered if he had more backbone than she had given him credit for. Finally, he turned towards her. “What do you suggest?”

“We could wait for more here. Perhaps even get some real Gurkish this time. But that might mean too many for we few.”

“So?”

“East, or north, and set another trap like this one.”

“And defeat the Emperor’s army a dozen men at a time? Small steps.”

Ferro shrugged. “Small steps in the right direction. Unless you’ve seen enough, and want to go back to your walls.”